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Angry tears

He gritted his teeth as the tears scalded angry tracks down his cheeks.

Anne Elliot had betrayed him.

Just three days ago, she had promised herself to him, as he had to her, only for her to break her word today and tell him she would not marry him after all.

Frederick hurled a rock into the creek he sat beside, though he could barely see the splash it made through his burning tears. After his conference with Anne, he had rushed away from Kellynch Hall, but not in the direction of the vicarage—he could not let his brother see him like this, his skin flushed and mottled with righteous indignation and eyes red with tears of fury. He had flung himself down by this creek when he found it, the sailor in him instinctively drawn to the water, as if it might soothe away his ire. But it hadn't. He scrubbed his cuff across his leaking eyes, but could not wipe away his bitter anger. Nor did he want to. Anne deserved his resentment.

She had said this was for his sake, but how could that be, when she was crushing his heart just to speak of it? He knew the truth—it was for the sake of her odious friend Lady Russell. She had persuaded Anne against him as a man of no title or consequence, and Anne had listened to her. Anne cared more for her than she did for him.

Frederick clenched his jaw and raised his chin. No, this was for his sake. He was better off without a wife as disloyal and weak as Anne Elliot.

He threw another rock in the creek and watched it sink.

Sorrowful tears

Frederick stood frozen at the foot of the bed. Her bed.

He had suspected this to be Anne's former room as soon as Sophia showed him inside earlier that day. Something about the atmosphere just felt like her, her level-headed but romantic nature, her quiet charm. The furnishing had Anne's understated elegance, chiefly in shades of light blue, her favorite color. (At least, light blue had been her favorite color eight years ago. He wondered if it might have changed—then pushed that thought away. He couldn’t care less what her favorite color was.)

Even without seeing the room, he could have deduced that it was once Anne’s. Sophia was staying in the mistress's room of Kellynch Hall, which probably would have belonged to Anne’s older sister since their mother was long dead, and Sophia would have given her brother the next-best room, which certainly would have belonged to the next daughter. Anne.

Still, he had wanted to be sure, so he had found a way of casually asking the housekeeper whose room this had once been. Miss Anne, she had said. His stomach had gone more sour than the first time he’d been to sea as a boy.

He had stayed away from the room as long as he could, convincing his brother-in-law to stay up very late playing billiards and drinking with him, but eventually the admiral had said he needed to be off to see his wife, and left Frederick alone.

He’d scowled at himself and gathered his courage and marched himself back to her room. And now here he was, in the middle of the night, staring at her bed. He was expected to sleep in Anne’s very bed.

He ought to have been used to it by now, he thought bitterly, for he ought to have been sleeping in her bed for the last eight years, beside her, as her husband.

Instead, he had slept every one of those nights those last eight years alone.

Resentment began to dull into the sorrow of loss, then ball itself up into a knot in his throat. He tried to swallow against it, but it grew larger and more painful with his resistance. He gasped in a breath, then released it in a low shuddering cry. His hands flew to cover his face, blocking out the view of the bed and catching his tears as his shoulders shook with his weeping.

Never had he felt as alone as he did at that moment. He had nursed his resentment of Anne into simmering anger over the years, but never allowed himself to feel it as pure sorrow before. Now, he did.

In the light of day, tomorrow, the sadness would be gone, transformed back to cold, prideful anger. But for now, in the night, standing at the foot of her empty bed, he wept in pure despair.

He threw himself into the chair by the fire, still weeping, and when all his tears were spent, he stayed there, sleeping away the meager remaining hours of the night with his back turned to her hateful bed.

Fearful tears

“Are you certain there is nothing else that can be done?” Edward asked his brother.

“It's the only honorable course of action,” Frederick insisted. “You know yourself, from Sophy's letters, that everyone expects me to.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I will have to marry her.”

Yes, he would have to marry Louisa Musgrove, when he was in love with a far superior woman, his Anne.

Panic choked his throat as tears welled in his eyes behind his palms. He was struck with the sudden urge to run, as if he could escape what he had done, and what waited for him because of it.

He had already fled by coming here, to his brother's house, hoping the distance would weaken his claim on Louisa's heart, but he feared it was too late to change the outcome of his actions. Over the course of the last several weeks, almost since he had first come to stay at Kellynch, he had paid Louisa every possible attention, staunchly denying the hidden truth of his heart, that he still bore an abiding love for Anne. He had steadily constructed this impenetrable trap for himself.

Edward's hand came to rest on his back. He had always had a soothing presence to him, part of what made him so well-suited to the clergy, and so different than Frederick. “Don't let yourself be troubled by things that have not yet come to pass. We do not know what the future holds,” he said with tenderness.

But it only made Frederick weep harder, because he immediately pictured his future with Louisa—or, more precisely, his future without Anne. He knew exactly what that future would feel like, because he had lived it for the last eight years. The idea of living it for decades more terrified him.

“Oh God, what a fool I've been!” he sobbed.

Edward could only pat his back while Frederick's pain and panic churned through him.

Regretful tears

He strode away from the concert hall with long strides, scarcely knowing where he was going, except that it was away. Yet he couldn't escape the image in his head, of Mr. Elliot sitting so close beside Anne, leaning toward her, her mouth at his ear to whisper something to him again and again, his easy smile as he whispered back to her.

Frederick heard the laugh of a woman ring out into the night air, and he turned toward the sound to see a couple on the opposite side of the street, a little ways ahead of him. The lady had her arm in the gentleman's and was pressed up against him as she laughed and strolled slowly forward. She said something to him, too low for Frederick to make out the words, but he could hear the happy tenor of her voice, as well as the cheer in the gentleman's as he turned his face toward hers to reply. And then he tilted his head down, his hat and her bonnet obscuring Frederick’s view of what was undoubtedly a kiss. It lasted only a heartbeat, and then the gentleman had pulled back and was walking forward again, their contented voices drifting away after them.

Envy at their happiness throbbed in Frederick’s breast. How he wished he could have had Anne on his arm tonight on this very street, laughing up at him, letting him steal a fleeting kiss in the peaceful darkness, just like that couple. He could remember a time when he and Anne had been like them, carefree and happy and bound together by mutual affection and respect. Regaining such bliss might have been possible.

But now, it was too late—he had thought it was too late when all that business with Louisa Musgrove came to a head, but then there had been a brief reprieve of hope, only for it to dash against the rocks of Mr. Elliot and send Frederick plunging back into even greater desolation.

And it was all his fault. Had he not been so damned prideful, he could have renewed his attentions to Anne as soon as he entered Somersetshire, before she ever became acquainted with Mr. Elliot. They could have been betrothed, even married, at this very moment, but instead he had nursed his resentment against her and let another man give her the attention she deserved.

A low keen slipped from his lips as he drew a hand over his leaking eyes. His feet stumbled to a stop as he hung his head and let his tears flow quietly. He had destroyed his own happiness. Before the accident at the Cobb, he'd had blessedly little familiarity with the sensation of regret, but over the last two tortured months, he'd felt it often and learned to despise it, the heavy, rotten gnawing of it in his gut.

Frederick thought that the regret might leave him once he’d learned Louisa was engaged to Benwick and he was free from the consequences of his unwise behavior, but it clung to him still. He even felt regret for how he had left Anne this evening; he knew he had been uncivil to her with his abrupt departure. Regret after regret built up upon him like pernicious barnacles, and vented themselves in his tears.

As much as he knew he deserved this anguish, he could not help but wish it gone. Yet, there was nothing he could do to make it retreat. He was used to always being able to overcome any obstacle that faced him, but this was a battle he could not triumph in. He could not fix this. Anne would marry Mr. Elliot, and they would be happy together. They would be the happy couple strolling down the street arm in arm.

Frederick swallowed a sob, and stumbled forward again, alone.

Happy tears

Croft clasped his shoulder and shook it, his ruddy face beaming at him. “I'm so happy for you!” It was perhaps the fifth time he had uttered those exact words in the last hour.

“You really must temper your excitement, my dear. Don't you see what a state my brother is in already? He will never be able to calm himself if you remain so agitated yourself,” Sophia urged. Yet she herself was in no calm state, her face flushed with excitement and the drink of which all three of them had perhaps partaken a bit too much.

But Frederick was in the worst state of all. He was grinning so broadly that his cheeks ached, and yet those same cheeks were wet with tears. His happiness to be marrying Anne tomorrow was so great that it had overwhelmed him into crying. He was not embarrassed by it, however. His sister and brother already knew him to be a passionate man.

“What need have I for calmness on such a night?” Frederick declared grandly, as if giving a speech to his men after a battle won.

“Tomorrow when you stand before the vicar, your head pounding with a frightful headache and barely able to keep your eyes open from fatigue, you’ll wish you had spent tonight resting,” Sophia warned, though she still wore a merry expression that blunted the impact of her statement.

“What!” Croft exclaimed, then shook Frederick’s shoulder once more. “This man, fatigued, tomorrow of all days? He’s marrying Anne Elliot!”

Frederick laughed out a sob, fresh tears escaping from his eyes to slide down his cheeks to his grinning mouth. He raked a hand through his hair in giddy disbelief. “Marrying Anne Elliot!” he repeated.

Laughter

“We need not do everything tonight, my darling,” he told her, though the idea of having to delay even an hour more let alone a day pierced him with a mad longing. Yet he would suffer the delay for her sake. He knew the marital act could be overwhelming for ladies the first time, and many husbands eased their new wives into it with lesser, though still pleasurable, acts for the first night or two. And after being such an unworthy suitor, he was determined to be the best of husbands.

However, his wife's response to his suggestion was to laugh. “Do you think that after waiting for this moment for over eight years that I should wish to delay for a moment longer? I want to be your wife in every way, Frederick.”

His mouth stretched wide into an open-mouthed smile. “I should never have doubted you, my fearless Anne.” He slipped a hand down to her thigh, finding the hem of her chemise and pulling it up to stroke her flesh. “You would have me, then?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

His hand slid into the warm space waiting between her thighs. “Inside you?”

“Yes,” she gasped.

He rolled fully above her. “You will,” he promised.

He proceeded as slowly and carefully as Anne would allow, which is to say, not very slowly. Her kind but firm insistence that she could bear more made him laugh out loud at one point. This was the woman who he had once believed too persuadable, too weak? What a fool he had been for thinking such of her, but he did not mind being proven incorrect once more, as she was proving it in such a delightful manner.

He kept his eyes open and fixed upon her face the entire time he moved within her, marveling at the beauty her pleasure wrought there. When she came undone, the intensity of the sensation creased her brow as she cried out, but as she calmed, a smile bloomed across her face and she stared into his eyes with pure joy shining there. Wentworth’s joy to see it was too great to remain in his breast—a laugh burst forth from his lips, driven out by the strength of his bliss, and a few minutes later, after he had spent himself inside her, he laughed again, hoarse and happy.

It should have surprised him, for he’d never laughed during sex before, but it did not, because he’d never known joy like this in his life before. And it was all because of his wife Anne Wentworth.